


As We Are

by Transistance



Series: Incompatible [10]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Asexual Relationship, F/M, Gender Dysphoria, Present Tense, Sex Repulsion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 13:05:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5091833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transistance/pseuds/Transistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's pathetic, isolated, not good enough for her or himself. Inept, hyperfunctional in terms of black and white; colourless, dead. He has no heart, he has no ability to do the most human of acts, he deserves neither her nor his own self-fulfilled position in life or death or whatever this could be described as now-</p>
            </blockquote>





	As We Are

“Hey,” she says, voice soft, and he feels her press a gentle kiss to his right temple. “You left work early today. I was worried. Is it..?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

There are days like this, few and far between, and he hates them. He hates them because there is nothing at fault outside his own insecurities, and emotions are really no good reason to leave the office. They interfere with his job and his own sense of self, and he despises himself for not being strong enough to force them to disperse. He doesn't open his eyes.

~

“You didn't turn up at all today.” She's at the table, head buried in her arms, and after a moment's uncertainty he reaches out to brush her hair with his fingers. “I was concerned.”

“Mm.” It's an acknowledgement, nothing more or less, and he knows it's all he'll get from her.

“Is it..?”

“Mm- _hm_.”

“Do you want-”

“ _Mm_ -mm.”

“...Okay.”

Grell's off days are about as infrequent as his own, and on them he is useless in a different way. Her issues are not his crosses to bear, and he can only lend her the comfort of his presence, nothing more. There are words that can be said to aid her, he's certain - but they're not in a language that he can speak.

~

On some nights they may as well be one soul for the closeness they share, and seem irrevocably perfect until the inevitable point that he is reminded of his thoughtless flaw and he withdraws, leaving her distant and alone on a bed that should be shared but instead is merely crowded. He loves the feel of her skin against his own and the warmth of her breath on his neck and the delicate shapes of her cheeks, collarbones, hips under her skin and his fingers but there's a tipping point past which he can never quite bring himself to go. Eventually she stops trying, and no matter how often she protests that he is perfect, her sighs – tiny, quiet things – cause his heart to crack.

On some nights they do not touch at all. These are the worst. Sometimes the touch of his lips will send her into hysterics, driven either by anger or shame – the two seem to run hand in hand – and no matter how persistently he insists that her self-depreciation is entirely unfounded there seems to be nothing with the power to soothe her except time. On other nights the barest brush of her fingers feels like dirt upon his skin, filthy, crawling grime that is wrong, wrong, utterly wrong – and on these nights he leaves. Leaves the room, leaves the house, leaves the realm – more often than not ends up sitting on a rooftop, a hill, a fence; anywhere the cold night has to offer, so long as it is silent. Grell knows never to follow – even she can understand the eventual need to be alone – and he lets the still night air wash the silt from him. On nights like these he finds it difficult to remember that he is even really sentient, anaesthetized as he is by the darkness and the clarity a dead night brings.

Usually, though, they are fine. They are fine because they make it so that they are fine; monsters of the mind are pushed away against the comfort of a half-lover's arms. Because usually her weight and form feels _right_ cradled against his own, or alongside it, or atop it – but only right. There is no wish to have her anywhere other than where she is; no drive to touch her in any way more intimate than can be given freely. There is sensation without desire, and he is content, and she sighs or gasps against him when he touches her neck or chest or thighs. He wishes he could understand how she feels, and she brushes his hair back from his forehead to tell him the same.

It is a strange way of loving, and neither is quite used to it yet, no matter how much they pretend otherwise. He has never been this close and she has always been closer, and the ground feels unstable as though they're children standing on a rusted roundabout in some abandoned park, spinning and spinning until dizziness over comes them and they fall about, minds addled for a short time. But there is no roundabout. There is only the spinning.

Sometimes she comes home with bruises worn like medals across her pristine face and laughs when he asks if she's okay, the alcohol on her breath only fuelling her scorn and shaking hands revealing loose lips and looser clothes. He hates that he allows her to do this, hates that she can justify it to him and herself with equal conviction. She collapses beside him on the bed, late night or early morning, spent, and he holds her protectively whilst she sleeps.

Of course, not all of her trysts end badly. Sometimes she arrives home beaming and breathless, flushed from some successful encounter, and curls up on a chair or in bed and just closes her eyes and smiles away to herself, presumably lost in the moment. He wishes he could give her cause to feel so much of whatever it is she feels.

But he cannot, and she has accepted this in its entirety; she informs him in gentle murmurs that she desires from him no more than what he already gives. He can no longer tell if she is lying or not. Perhaps she can't either.

It is a relationship of two halves from separate wholes, a little rough around the seams and not made to fit together – but that is the beauty of being conscious beings themselves. _They_ make it work, despite the inherent differences that neither can control. It is _their_ relationship built on _their_ decisions, and only the two of them can decide the lines of where it began and where it will end.


End file.
